


someday our ocean will find its shore

by friendly_ficus



Series: from a much outdated style [6]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: AU where they're basically gods, Gen, Minor Character Death, Pike spent time on a ship and i've never gotten over it, seriously what does faith look like for pike in this AU, vague nods to canon and even vaguer nods to d&d
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 17:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17370398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: Divinity is wide, is deep, is endless - sometimes she thinks she will drown in it.Or: Interlude Three, Pike





	someday our ocean will find its shore

  Pike never has any parents - she’s got Uncle Ogden and Johann and really JB, mostly. JB who she shares stories and secret handshakes with, JB who she lays next to in the wagon at night as they travel to the next town, and the next, and the next after that. She has to look after JB, Uncle Ogden said, make sure her cousin stays quiet while they travel. 

  (JB got the same set of instructions, but Pike never knew it.)

  So it’s her and JB and the others, and together they’re the Trickfoot clan, wringing out crowds of people in search of a little extra coin and leaving under the cover of darkness. Pike isn’t good at being sneaky or quick, Uncle Ogden says she doesn’t have a good head for it. She tries not to think about that too much, tries not to worry about being a disappointment. Instead, she braids JB’s hair again and smiles at the way they match, at the way they sometimes pretend to be siblings, two heads of dark hair chasing each other around the campsite.

  Then Papa Wilhand comes, and there’s a lot of angry conversation between him and Uncle Ogden. She’s never met him, never met a different kind of Trickfoot, and when he spots her he smiles and she feels happy. Like sunshine.

  He pats her on the shoulder and looks into her eyes, sees a little girl with a missing front tooth and sunlight peeking through the clouds to spill onto her face. Wilhand’s resolved to do his best for Sarenrae and his descendants, and Pike... he can give her a life that’s better than this one. So he does.

  Pike is a child when she leaves, and gradually the memories of her early life get hazy and indistinct. Still, she never remembers looking back.

\---

  Papa Wilhand is her first real teacher, hand gentle as he pats her head. He helps her with her reading and makes sure she knows her gnomish, marvels at her smallest achievements, at a picture she’s drawn of their small garden or at the friends she makes. It was unnerving at first, the endless support and encouragement, but in time she blooms.

  He prays at his humble shrine and she watches, curious. She watches until she can’t just patiently watch anymore, until she tugs on his sleeve and asks what he’s doing. What Wilhand Trickfoot teaches her about Sarenrae changes the rest of her life, and she prays with him.

  The first time Sarenrae answers back it’s near-deafening, the low tolling of a great bell, deep enough to bring tears to Pike’s eyes. She babbles about it for days, trying to fit her mouth around the right words to explain it, and Papa Wilhand is so happy. 

  “My Pike,” he says over their dinner, “this is a blessing.”

  No one’s ever called her blessed before. She’s always been another Trickfoot, bad luck bringing and thieving and lying. She’s been  _ clever,  _ on the rare occasions Uncle Ogden was very pleased with her. She’s been  _ nice,  _ when JB woke from a scary dream and needed comforting. Never this, before. Never blessed.

  Some answering call in her sings back with rightness, Sarenrae is a teacher of second chances and Pike wants them so very much.

\---

  Papa Wilhand comes home one day with more agitation than she’s ever seen in him, hands waving frantically as he explains what’s transpired.

  “... and they fell on the young fellow, one of their very own, my Pike, as I told you. They beat him terribly and just left him there, for standing up for me, and you’ve got such a connection with the Everlight I was thinking that you could try to do something for him.”

  “I don’t know - I’ve only ever done small things I don’t know if I can - “

  “Trying, my Pike, it is important to try. Come, I’ll show you where he is.” 

  Following Wilhand’s hurried steps, Pike grasps the symbol of Sarenrae around her neck and prays,  _ help me, help me be fast enough and strong enough and brave enough.  _ Distant bells, soft echoes in her ears as a warmth seeps into her hands from the symbol. The goliath is still in the dirt, bleeding sluggishly from his wounds. If he’s young like Papa Wilhand says, Pike’d hate to see a grown man his size looming over her. 

  It strikes her abruptly that without the intervention of this goliath, Papa Wilhand would be dead and she would be alone. She pushes the thought away and reaches inward, calling on her faith, on the mercy of the Everlight.  _ Help me heal him. Help me -  _

  A gentle yellow light glows around her hands and she brings them to his chest, into the puddle of blood and dirt and bruises. There’s a loud  _ crack _ that echoes down the empty road, like something snapping back into place. His chest begins rising and falling and he sits up, flinging her to the side and gasping for breath.

  “Who’re you?”

  “I’m Pike Trickfoot,” she says, stepping in front of Papa Wilhand. “Who’re you supposed to be?”

  “Grog.”

  And that’s all it takes for her to make the best friend of her life.

\---

  Her youth in Westrunn, after meeting Grog, becomes more exciting. Sure, there’s still chores to do and prayers to pray, but there’s also someone to back her up in confrontations and the week-long quest they embark on to find out where in the town the best meat pies are made. With someone beside her, standing up for other people becomes that much easier. She’s been Wilhand’s Pike for years to the neighbors, an object of no small amount of pity. 

  (“Poor dear,” Young Becca at the market tsked, “with only Old Wilhand for company.”)

  Now, though, she’s part of Pike and Grog - a duo like the small town has never seen, perpetually getting into scrapes and somehow fixing things up afterwards. At first, people in town had been wary of her friend. He was large and loud and an outsider, Papa Wilhand had reminded her, and it would take people some time to get used to him. It would take  _ him  _ some time to get used to people.

  (“Patience, my Pike,” her grandfather said as he frowned at her bruised knuckles. “He’s unfamiliar with the town and the people, and they are unfamiliar with him.”

  “They were making fun of him,” she spat with fiery eyes, “they called him stupid. They laughed at him for losing count.”

  “Good thing he has you to stand up for him, then.”)

  Grog’s her best friend. He’s her  _ best friend.  _ The small part of her that is always alone, staring up at the stars on the back of Uncle Ogden’s wagon, waiting for Wilhand to give up on her, expecting Sarenrae to stop answering her prayers - when Grog’s around, that’s quiet. He laughs with her, calls her his buddy and a monstah; if she has to break a couple faces of neighborhood troublemakers who want to make trouble for him, well, that’s a price she is perfectly willing to pay.

  Her jaw aches, sometimes, from clenching her teeth and holding back her anger. She knows Sarenrae’s teachings, knows Papa Wilhand’s teachings, knows that second chances are vital and that the potential within them is sacred. But when she bloodies stupid Toby’s nose for taunting Grog, when she dumps Jo into the creek for making a comment about Wilhand’s age - the older part of herself, the Trickfoot part, revels.

  Pike feels guilt, later, and sometimes the possibility is enough to stop herself from acting beforehand. Usually, though, her conviction is bright and fierce and snarling,  _ this impulse is just and this impulse is right and I  _ **_must_ ** _ act on it. _

  Sarenrae teaches second chances and Pike wants them, truly - but in her heart she knows she is not the same level as her goddess. She cannot forgive forever, even if there is a possibility of change. Some things go too far. 

  (“You really think the herd might come back someday?”

   “Yeah, maybe. They won’t be happy to see me, Pike.”

   “They’d try to hurt you?”

   “Probably. But hey, I’m really strong. You’re really strong. We could take ‘em.”

   “Okay, you’re right. Okay, okay, okay, if it happens, we’ll do that.”)

\---

  A storm splits the sky above The Broken Howl, the ship rocking dangerously close to a tipping point. It’s three months in on her solo trip, out from the shelter of Westruun and the red brick house Papa Wilhand and Grog are back in. Her holy symbol is warm in her fist as the cold wind batters the rest of her. 

  (A restless feeling itched at the back of her brain for weeks before she decided to leave - Pike has spent so long hungry for second chances that the new hunger was strange and unfamiliar and demanding. She loved her family and the house with its shrine to Sarenrae. But the dreams - lightning tearing across the sky and rough seas and the wind pulling at her hair - they were haunting. She left Westruun hunting for them.)

  The captain roars orders out over the high wind when the sky tears again and a bolt of lightning  _ slams  _ into the upper deck, right where her shouting was coming from. The deck gives an ominous creak and the force of the impact throws Pike back, against a heavy coil of rope that has blessedly remained on deck - it’s likely too heavy with moisture to be moved by the body of a gnome. Her head hits the wooden planks of the ship and she blinks away stars, and the metal symbol of the Everlight flies from her fist down, down into the waves.

  Pike spits out a truly admirable addition to the litany of curses and screams around her as the ship lurches once more. They need the captain - she’s a good leader and Pike refuses to let her die. She makes her way to the woman’s side, spitting out rainwater and ignoring the burning smell of flesh and the emptiness of her hands.

  “You don’t get to go yet,” she says, reaching for her faith. “Not now.”

  (“My Pike,” Papa Wilhand told her years ago, “from what I know, a cleric uses a holy symbol to call for their deity. I’m not sure what one for her would be, exactly, but I’m sure she’ll tell you when the time for that business comes.”

_ Please,  _ Pike had prayed,  _ please, show me how to do this. Show me how to reach you. _

  The metal disk had appeared on her windowsill the next morning, sun-warmed and shining. A cleric casts with a holy symbol.)

_ It’s gone, it’s gone over the side but you have to hear me, help me, help me, the captain has to live, help me,  _ **_please._ **

  (The symbol was a comfort when she first left, the only comfort she had allowed herself to bring along on this wandering. It kept her heart warm and reminded her to  _ forgive first, perhaps, before reaching for the mace.) _

  She can feel Sarenrae reaching back but it’s not close enough, a whisper away and somehow so far - the captain will die here and now if Pike can’t work a miracle, will die here on the deck of the ship with the storm raging around them. It’s not right, it’s not just, it’s not acceptable. There has to be a way.

  Pike calls up her knowledge and conviction and rage, reaches harder, pushes at the Divine Gate with her will alone - it’s not enough, but something else ruptures, something else  _ shatters  _ in her soul. 

  The captain blinks awake to the sight of Pike Trickfoot, eyes glowing with a white-gold power, one hand on her shoulder and the other raised as if in warning. A sphere of light grows around the gnome, and then the captain, and then the whole fucking ship; for a moment it fills the vision of every sailor. 

**“Enough,”** Trickfoot ordered.

  And the sea around them calmed, clouds above The Broken Howl parting and letting a tiny bit of sunlight through.

  The lightshow faded as Trickfoot lowered her hand, blinking rapidly, and faceplanted into the deck.

\---

  When Pike wakes three days after the storm, an elderly human man is dozing in the corner of the captain’s cabin. The woman herself is nowhere to be seen, but through the window she can hear the sound of sea birds and grumbling dockworkers. Safe, it seems, for now.

  (Energy curls around and stretches under her skin, powerful and not like the light of Sarenrae at all.  _ Strike hard,  _ it murmurs,  _ and do not yield. _ It’s strange and pushy and hers, somehow.)

  She coughs a little, throat dry. White hair falls into her face.  _ That’s not mine,  _ she thinks.

  The man starts, before moving to the chair next to the bed, about even with her height.

  “Are you awake, Pike? Your captain will be glad to see you.”

  (Across the entirety of the docks, a warm breeze. Old aches hurt a little less, backs straighten and arms fill with renewed strength.)

  “Who’re you?”

  “My name is Father Tristan,” he replies, fishing out an emblem. “I’m a cleric of Sarenrae.”

  “Cool,” Pike gives a weary smile, “you wouldn’t happen to have an extra holy symbol lying around somewhere, would you? I sorta need one.”

\---

  The new holy symbol feels heavy and unfamiliar around her neck, like she’s trying to deny the new power surging through her body.  _ Do not yield,  _ it whispers again.

_ Fine,  _ Pike thinks,  _ I’m a follower of Sarenrae and that will never change. That unyielding enough for you? _

  There is no response.

\---

  Some people just need killing.

  When she gets to the outskirts of Westruun, she sees smoke rising from the buildings in the distance. The fear in the air is tangible as she makes her way into the empty streets as quietly as she can. 

_   Help me,  _ she prays,  _ help me see what’s happened here.  _ To her left, she hears the muted jangling of a shop bell. Young Becca cracks her grandmother’s door open and beckons Pike inside.

  “You’re here,” Young Becca says, “You shouldn’t have come back. It’s not safe.” Her eyes dart to the drawn curtains at the front of the shop.

  “What happened?”

  “Girl,” an elderly voice calls softly, “Who’ve you got there?”

  “It’s Wilhand’s girl, gran, little Pike.” 

  (Bound bloody to a log in the center of town, a goliath’s chest rises and falls. Under swollen eyelids, Grog Strongjaw is stirring. Young Becca has dark shadows under her eyes, like she hasn’t slept in days - but her spine straightens slightly, and her focus gets sharper.)

  “Well, bring her here then. We must be more neighborly, aren’t I always telling you that? Now more than ever.” Old Becca the shopkeeper waits in the back room and offers Pike her choice of cookie to go with a pot of tea.

  “They’re all stale,” Old Becca says, “forgive that, dear, since we haven’t exactly gone out in three days.” By her tone, Pike would do well to forgive just about anything. Old Becca’s always been like that, stern and slightly intimidating even after Pike and Grog had found out that she made the best meat pie in Westruun.

  “It’s really alright, I’m sure the flavors are still, um, nice. What’s going on?”

  There’s a loud sound of footsteps outside and all three of them freeze, utterly silent. A beat, then two, then the steps move on.

  “Drink the tea, dear,” Old Becca orders firmly. “My granddaughter will tell you all she can.”

  The young woman clears her throat, still looking nervously in the direction from the door. “Three days ago, the remnants of Herd of Storms showed up. There weren’t very many of them; I don’t know what happened but Grog said there used to be more. He said one of them was his uncle Kevdak and he recognized a few others, and he said it would be trouble. So the night we saw them coming, a whole lot of people started running the other way.”

  Detail by painstaking detail, Young Becca describes the abandonment of Westruun and the capture of Grog Strongjaw, who put himself between some residents and some sort of spellcaster. They dragged him to the center of town and beat him bloody and left him there.

_ A little like last time,  _ Pike thought,  _ seems like they want to make sure he’s dead this time, but he can’t, he just can’t be. Not Grog. _ The hand not occupied with a teacup curls into a fist.

  “We haven’t seen your grandfather,” Old Becca says with uncharacteristic gentleness, “but you know how he is. Probably has a trick up his sleeve. First chance we get, we’re going to get out too.”

  “Come with us,” urges Young Becca. “We’re going to try tonight.”

_ I do not yield. I do not abandon the fight. I can’t run away, I can’t leave Grog here, I  _ **_won’t._ **

  “Thank you for the offer,” Pike says, “really. But I can’t go with you.”

  “They’ll kill you if they can. They’ve been killing a lot of people.” Young Becca’s voice is bleak.

  “I’m sorry. I’m going to make it stop.” 

  An old woman and her grown granddaughter watch an armored gnome step out into the street. Sunlight shines down on Pike’s hair like a beacon and she walks with such determination that it brings a light to Young Becca’s eyes. 

  “Make sure you’re ready to go, Becca,” her grandmother reminds her. “The girl is brave but we need to be prepared.” Still. In her old chest, hope stirs.

\---

**“Grog, wake up.”**

  His wounds heal as energy sinks into his body like it did years ago, Sarenrae’s light helped along with a little something extra. His buddy Pike hands him an axe and she’s glowing. Like a firefly, literally glowing. It’s badass, is what it is, wisps of light coming off her like little fires.

  A javelin flies towards her back and misses by inches and Grog, whose strength comes from his friends roars his rage to the sky. The world fades into a haze of red and the two of them, Pike and Grog, two monsters of a feather, fall on a crowd of goliaths.

  He’s her best friend. He’s her  _ best friend.  _ What's the Herd of Storms, in the face of the two of them?

  Bones break and blood sprays and Grog kills his uncle. Something in him, like something in her, changes.

\---

  Papa Wilhand held on for a few more years after the invasion and subsequent repair efforts in Westruun. They were good years, full of laughter and gardening and inside jokes in gnomish. Pike and Grog did the best they could to make the years good. They took only brief trips away, and eventually even those stopped.

  On the last evening, Papa Wilhand called her to his side. 

  “I’m so very proud of you, my Pike. So proud.”

  (The shrine to Sarenrae gleamed in its small alcove of the home. Across town, the carpenter Toby’s sprained ankle suddenly felt better.)

  “I want you to take this, now, okay? Careful, it’s an heirloom.” He presses something into her hand and folds his own around it. 

  “A blessing for you,” her great-great grandfather says. “As you have been for me.”

  There’s a brief jangling of bells in her ears as she holds his hand, and then he’s gone. Grog sets a giant hand on her shoulder with all the gentleness he has.

  Pike is brave, she has fought and killed and tried so hard to learn to forgive. Tears spill from her eyes as the first person to ever call her blessed dies.

  The Trickfoot necklace is heavy in her hand, but when she loops it around her neck it hangs perfectly against her chest, right beneath her holy symbol. Her grief stretches out like an ocean before her, even as the  _ other  _ energy finally, finally settles into something wholly hers.

  Grog squeezes her shoulder carefully, a reminder that she is not alone.

\---

  They find the sword in some tomb or other, chasing some kind of creature that’s been bothering people in a village a day’s journey from Vasselheim. She should’ve known it was bad business from the start, but Grog had been so happy, so entertained that she just sort of - let it go.

  The  _ other  _ in her seethes now, standing in the Platinum Sanctuary as Highbearer Vord regards Grog’s collapsed form. Kashaw Vesh shifts uncomfortably beside her.

  (He’d tried his best to help, he really had. And when they couldn’t convince Grog to give the sword up, Kash helped her get him here. “I’m not a good guy,” oh,  _ sure. _ )

  “He’s fighting it in there,” Pike interrupts finally, “we just need to help him out  _ here.” _

  “A just cause,” a new voice calls as a halfling woman enters the room. “The right thing to do is what we do. I’m Kima, let me see what I can do.”

  Ignoring the Highbearer’s protests, she crosses the lines of containment runes surrounding Grog. Craven Edge seems to darken the very air around her. She shoots Pike a very brief grin.

  “You’ve got guts, mysterious Cleric of Sarenrae. I like that in an ally.” Kima raises her maul into the air, light coming in through a large stained glass depiction of Bahamut catching on the metal. She turns her face upward and Pike can feel the divine presence in the room, unfamiliar and powerful.

  “Put me in, coach,” says Lady Kima of Vord.

  There’s a strange, distant echo - the cry of some great creature Pike’s never encountered.

  Kima collapses to the stone floor beside Grog, hand still tight around her weapon.

  She won’t wake for an entire day - but when she opens her eyes, he does too.

\---

  Pike cheers herself hoarse as Phillip fights in the arena, Kima calling out critiques beside her and Kashaw making bets with the people around them. Kern the Hammer has been champion for a while and to his credit he puts up a very good fight.

  The Crucible has a new champion that day, and Pike feels a lightness in her heart that hasn’t been there in a long time. He’s Grog and she’s Pike, buddies and monstahs until the bitter end.

\---

  “He could really use some lightening up, you know?” Pike says as she’s shaking Grog awake outside of Kraghammer after the disastrous day in Pyrah.

  “The skinny guy? Yeah,” he replies, last word splitting around a yawn. “How about we figure it out together.”

  “Absolutely.”

\---

  The place where the Horn hit back hurts, still. It’s been hurting ever since she stood on that ziggurat with Scanlan and sent it  **away.** Pike thinks she’s been doing a pretty good job keeping that under wraps, though. There are bigger things to worry about right now, there are dragons and missing gods.

  In a quiet moment in the tavern is enraptured by Scanlan’s story, Percy leans next to her with an odd expression on his face. He looks like he’s trying very hard not to look sincere. It isn’t working.

  “I may not be a healer, but... you know it’s okay if you’re not okay, right?” The question comes out just a shade too earnestly for the unconcerned air he was trying to put on.

  Pike blinks at him, briefly surprised. 

  “Percy,” she says gently, “you remember how we started this, right? The whole ‘every god has vanished, let’s meet up’ part?”

  He nods, candlelight glinting on his glasses.

  “Then you know I have to be okay. I  _ have  _ to be, we’re trying to be the hope of the world or something. So yeah, I’m okay.” She feels off-balance and hurts somewhere deep inside. The world needs the gods back. One of these things is more important than the other one.

  “We’ll fix it,” Percy says impulsively. “Whatever’s wrong, with the world or with you, we’ll solve the problem.”

  Pike rather likes that idea.

**Author's Note:**

> There’s the Pike interlude! It was really interesting to write, especially the parts about Sarenrae. In this story Vax found faith after a lot of things happened to him, and Scanlan’s faith is a lot more casual compared to the usual deity and cleric relationship - he doesn’t get power from Ioun, he’s her friend. It really fascinates me to figure out how each of their relationships (Vax, Scanlan, and Pike) differ regarding faith and the gods for this narrative. I’m still so interested in how Pike had to balance Sarenrae’s teachings on redemption and her desire for her own justice during the canon campaign; in this story it’s a more overt conflict because justice and righteous anger are Pike’s Thing. (Which has it’s own ups and downs.)  
> Next Time: The Gang Breaks Into A Library To Borrow Some Books And Get Some Answers.  
> Thanks for reading! I really like comments, let me know what you think of the series so far! There is still more to come (we’re finally getting into the stuff I have better outlines for haha)


End file.
